Matthew McConaughey, Tulsi Gabbard, Andrew Schulz, Dave Portnoy, Tim Dillon, and Charlie Kirk anchor a 2025 retrospective covering parenting meritocracy, intelligence community cost savings of $170 million, and NSA chat purges. The episode details IVF struggles involving 48-hour nursing home deadlines and hormonal rage at Japanese restaurants, while critiquing Meghan Markle's "Professions of a Female Founder" podcast for trivializing startup issues. Ultimately, the discussion blends personal vulnerability with sharp cultural commentary on gender dynamics, celebrity authenticity, and political accountability. [Automatically generated summary]
welcome to the megan kelly show live on sirius xm channel 111 every weekday at new east hey everyone i'm megan kelly Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show and Merry Christmas.
Today, we look back at the entire year of 2025 and bring you some of the most memorable interviews from the more than 200 episodes of the show.
We had on Matthew McConaughey in September talking about raising kids and getting out of Hollywood to stay true to himself.
Tulsi Gabbard, our director of national intelligence, came on for a special hour-long sit-down from the DNI headquarters.
The comedians Andrew Schultz and Tim Dillon came by this studio for in-person interviews that were hilarious and deep.
Bar Stew Sports founder Dave Portnoy joining me at SiriusXM headquarters in New York for an in-depth conversation.
And then there was Charlie Kirk at the end of this episode, a fun conversation from his final appearance on this show in August.
It's hard to believe.
With some truly brilliant dating advice for young men and women, we are going to miss him so much.
And we already do.
It's just a sampling of this very busy year made successful thanks to you.
Enjoy.
And we will see you next week for True Crime Christmas.
In the Lost Bus, you have an interesting situation because you have your son.
Your son, Levi, is starring in it, 17 years old.
And I've actually, so I'm kind of drafting behind you on the childhood front because my kids are almost your kids' ages.
They're 15, 14, and 12.
And now that they're getting to be like real humans, you know, like we're, they're on the cusp of adulthood.
I've asked myself this question about nepotism, the nepo baby.
And, you know, when you're the mother of a kid who's, you know, through no fault of their own is born to you and you might be a public figure, it's hard to call it that, you know, as opposed to like, well, if my kid wanted my help getting into my industry, I'd probably give him an open door and then let him take it.
And you were recently in this position.
Can you tell us what happened?
Yeah.
And that nepotism question is a really good one because I don't want my kids to ever feel entitled.
At the same time, do I believe with people in my own life outside of my family that if you want to know where the arrow is going, look at where it was shot from.
So there's real practicality to that.
My son, as I pitch films that I'm in to my family all the time, my son comes to me and he knew that there was a role as a young boy to play my son.
He says, how old is that kid?
I said, he's about 13, 14, which was Levi's age at the time.
And he goes, can I read for it?
And I was like, kind of just straight-faced him and walked off.
I wanted to see how much he wanted it.
If it was just a whim or what he comes up four more times over the next week, can I read for it?
Can I read for it?
Can I read for it?
And I said, okay, you want to read for it?
Let me tell you what this acting thing is about.
This is not just a little, hey, hey, what if, hey, I'm going to teach you something about this?
You got to revere this craft and you got to work at it.
So let's work on this character right now.
We'll get a read.
We did.
I put it on camera.
I saw on camera.
I was like, oh, he's got presents.
He can hold a frame.
He's being honest in front of the camera.
That's good instincts.
Okay.
I sent it to the casting director and I said, Francine, I think this may be good enough for callback.
What do you think?
And she wrote back and said, I think it's good enough to send to the director.
And I said, oh, okay.
Will you do me a favor?
Will you pull his last name off?
Because I just don't want it preceding, you know, anyone's opinion to help or to help or anything.
She goes, yes.
Right.
You don't want to send the message.
I'm phoning in a favor here.
Hey, you know, Cona, it's playing my son.
Phidi, if you do me a favor, I would not make that call and I'm not going to make that call.
Again, open the door.
But once you get in the door, son, daughter, you go handle.
But I did open a door.
I had access to get his read to the cast director.
Well, the director sees it and says, that's the kid.
She goes, well, that happens to be Matthew's son.
He goes, even better.
So he got the role, which makes, I'm very proud of.
And he did it on his own merit in his own talent.
Okay, but now let me ask you about part two, part two.
So then he, so he stars in it.
It's about to launch.
And now I think at this point in the process, I haven't yet gotten there.
And none of my kids have said they want to go to media.
I'm just saying like I would help them.
I think I'd be living in terror.
of bad reviews, of nasty internet trolls.
It's one thing when they come for us.
Who cares?
We're used to it.
But come for my kid.
I mean, that's the kind of thing I might toss and turn over at night.
I have not tossed and turned.
And maybe that's because I said, get ready for it.
It's going to happen anyway.
I said, your last name is going to get you praise in places maybe you didn't deserve it.
It's also going to get you slammed in places you don't deserve it.
So this is a rodeo.
If you want to get into this, I'm not saying you got to have thick skin, but you've got to know what's important to you and you got to be ready.
Knives are going to come at you whether you deserve them or not.
Fair has nothing to do with this.
So if you love doing the craft enough and you're good at it, you stick your put your head down and do that.
And the rest of that, you've got to have thick skin about because that's going to happen.
Fair has nothing to do with this.
That's a great life lesson.
In the book, you write in Poems and Prayers, you write, I wrote it down.
Your number one job is helping your kids become who they are, not who you want them to be.
Shoot it into my veins.
It's exactly right.
So many people don't get it, Matthew.
They think the kids are a do-over.
And you've come to the same realization that Doug and I have, which is that DNA thing has a lot to do with how they show up.
A lot more than I do.
We just kind of fool ourselves that we're the big maestros about where it's going.
But that was the biggest surprise to me about having children.
I thought it was 9010 environment culture to DNA.
And all of a sudden I was like, oh, it's closer to the opposite.
Yes.
Totally.
But that's, I mean, I would imagine, especially in Hollywood, that's not a lesson everybody understands, you know, because it's a very hard charging group.
I don't mean to dump on Hollywood nonstop, though I'll be honest, my audience can't stand Hollywood.
But it's a very hard charging group of people.
I've done some good stories.
Yeah.
That have made it in a very competitive industry.
Like they've made it at the top.
So they've got to be somewhat cutthroat.
But then you have a kid and everybody out there is probably facing a similar challenge, which is how do I maintain my kids' competitive drive, notwithstanding the fact that they've been born into a life of luxury and privilege, et cetera, right?
And like, I don't know.
I think too many parents would default to, I'll make him a killer, as opposed to, I will sit back and figure out, like let him figure out whether he wants to be a killer.
Well, you know how it is.
I mean, it's, it's, there's a lot of parents, and you probably know them as well, that from my money, I think become or want to be friends with their children when they need to be parents to them.
And that friend to their children is sometimes a bit of that do-over.
Hey, maybe you can pick up where I left off and become a better version of me, which is, that's not what a child's act asking for early on.
You know, do-overs.
I think that kids want us to be a parent to them early.
Are you more traditional dad?
I mean, I know you're married to a Brazilian woman, and I have a lot of Brazilian friends.
I know that they tend to like a more traditional man, and you're from Texas.
So I kind of feel like you'd be more of a trad dad.
But are you?
Look, I'm more, I go, I call it, and this is not a political term, but I call it conservative early liberal late.
I want my kids to know how to block and tackle, know your manners and graces and arithmetic and respect before we're going to go fly a freak flag and say, whatever.
So I think art emulates life.
I want them to learn who they are and who they are not in life before they're going off into imaginations.
Now you can create whoever it is you want to be, but let's have a foundation that we understand about how we act and how we treat ourselves and each other before we go off into, you know, la-la-land of dreams and creation.
Again, how I grew up, learned to deal before I learned to dream.
That's how that's sort of my look at it.
I believe in consequences.
I believe in discipline.
I also believe that sometimes, as I'm learning right now, I did not know, Megan, that I always thought you went from father to later on a friend.
And I did not know that there's a bridge in the middle there called big brother as a father.
And I'm able to be a big brother, especially now that my kids are teens and I can kind of put my hand on their back and maybe not judge them as quickly and go, I know what you're talking about.
Let me tell you this story about when I was in high school.
And the other great thing about teenage kids is I don't have to edit my good stories as much to them anymore.
Now, which period of your life are the best stories from?
Oh, I mean, I've got some starting back from when I was eight.
I think the best stories were probably, oh, man, every decade had a great story.
I would say I could pick them out all over the place.
There's things I look back at that I did when I was younger that makes me happy to be here and alive.
But there's been some great stories, which I cataloged along the way, and mostly in green lights and somewhat in poems and prayers.
I think there's been some pretty good stories along the way.
Well, you don't seem risk averse, both you've outlined it, leaving Hollywood and saying, I'm just going to do it differently.
That was a huge risk.
But your life philosophy does not, as reflected in poems and prayers, does not seem to favor safe spaces.
It seems to favor take the big risks and don't die in your bed saying, I never got hurt.
Right.
Well, that's a constant thing to measure, isn't it?
Because especially after getting successful, having a family, things that I've built that I want to maintain, that I'm not going to be foolish with.
All right.
At the same time, I don't want to get complacent and safe and go, okay, this is it.
Everyone just huddle up, put your, you know, keep everything else out.
I still want to take risk.
And that's also, you know, something that I know women, I'm sure they do too, but men go through in middle age.
You're at the bottom of the horseshoe.
Like, are we taking the risk anymore?
How do we still take a chance with the take the right kind of risk?
And I still want to take the right kind of risk, but I don't want to be foolish with what I've built because some of the stuff I've built is non-negotiably going to be on my table and in my life until I leave this one.
You know, I have that passage in poems and prayers.
I'm curious, you know, if is God happier if we take eight major risks in life and pull off seven of them?
Or is he happier when we take 100 risks and pull off eight?
You know, it's like a little bit of that.
You don't want to come up.
You know what I mean?
Right.
I think he's saying if you didn't take enough risk, if you didn't, maybe, maybe that's the sin.
You know what I mean?
Yes.
And if you didn't, it's, it's, it's, you know, the sin comes from an archery term to miss the mark.
That's what the word sin comes from, to miss the mark.
We miss the mark all the time.
And I don't want to quit taking the chances to miss the mark.
I want to make, I want to hit the mark, but don't want to go out going, well, I never shot.
It's even harder when you've reached your level of success because now you do have a lot to lose.
So, you know, to keep challenging yourself, to keep making yourself go out there and take the big risks, it gets even scarier, right?
It's one thing when you're up and coming, it's like, what the hell?
Or even when you're on the middle of the ladder, but when you're at the top of the ladder with all the things, a lot of people would say, I'm going to stay.
I'm going to hold.
Yeah, I'll hold.
I'll hold.
You don't feel that way.
I hope not.
Look, I've been told by many people that are close to me that my biggest asset is that I take risk.
I also think that that's what I need to take more of, that I don't take enough.
So as it is.
What would that look like now?
What could that look like for Matthew McConaughey at 55?
Putting my cards on the table of who I am in this big movie that I'm living that was actually called The Day I Was Born and Cuts called The Day I'm Leaving This Life, the documentary that I'm living, that we're all living, putting it on and going.
And it's what I'm doing a bit up now.
And I still have a ways to go.
I'm creating characters that I believe in and want to play in my own life and saying, what are you doing live?
What's happening?
The camera's rolling.
It's been rolling since the day we were born.
What do you, why do you have to go off to do someone else that's something else, someone that something else wrote and is directing and is putting in cinematographer and then editing?
Get rid of those filters.
What am I doing live?
Who am I live in life?
That's what I'm pressing myself on for the mainly to the last six years more so than any time.
And I hope I'll continue to press on myself to do that.
That, okay, that leads me to one of my favorite pieces in the book, which is on page 77, it's good man.
And you write as follows: there's a difference between a good man and a nice guy.
A good man stands for certain ideals.
And when those beliefs are contested, a good man is not a nice guy.
No.
I love that.
Can you talk about how you came to that realization?
Yeah.
So, you know, part of it, I think the best example would be around that time, I was doing nothing but the rom-coms.
You know, those were, those are nice guy roles.
They worked.
I enjoyed them.
I was getting paid well.
They were easy to do.
They felt like a Saturday.
They're nice guy roles and nothing wrong with that.
But I was ready to do more dramas in life.
I was ready to stand up for things that I believed in and standing against things I didn't in life.
And I wanted to also find roles that I could do that in.
That's when I started becoming more of a good man.
And that means you're going to run into conflicts.
That means you're going to have to go against the masses at certain times.
That means you're going to have to lead when you'd rather just sit back and watch sometimes.
That means you're going to have to run towards crisis instead of away from it sometimes.
That means you're not going to be proper.
That means you're going to receive the blades in the back.
And it's okay.
Becoming a Good Man00:05:49
It's easier too.
I know for me, when my faith is stronger, because I can schluff those things off, because I'm going, no, no, no, I'm playing an immortal game here.
Stay, that's the game I'm playing.
Don't worry about the mortal game.
Worry about the immortal game.
So to have the courage to do that and what you stand for and don't stand for.
And I always like to say this to people that are, as we're finding ourselves, especially young people, it's harder to say, oh, who am I and what do I want to do?
It's easier to go, well, let's define who I'm not and what I don't want to do and eliminate those people, places, and things and habits that we have in our life that are not paying us back.
Get rid of those.
And by sheer mathematics, you'll have more things in front of us that do feed us.
And hey, we all got good wolves and bad wolves in us.
It's our choice to which wolf we want to feed.
I'm trying to do my best to feed the good wolf, knowing that the bad wolf's still hungry.
Okay, speaking of the wolves, the wolf of Wall Street, how fun was that role?
I've got to ask you.
This is an amazing role.
What can I bring for you on this glorious afternoon?
Well, Hector, here's the game plan.
You're going to bring us two absolute martinis.
You know how I like them straight up.
And then precisely seven and one half minutes after that, you're going to bring us two more.
Then two more after that, every five minutes until one of us passes the fuck out.
Excellent strategy, sir.
I'm good with water for now, though.
Thank you.
It's his first day on Wall Street.
Give him time.
First time to work with Scorsese.
First time to work with Leonardo.
I'm getting called in for a day's work.
I'm a little nervous.
I get there.
Really?
But this character, oh, yeah.
I always, I still get nervous no matter what I'm doing.
I get nervous every single day at work, just the right amount.
I don't want to lose the butterflies yet.
And I go in, and one of the things I do, not only on that show, but on all shows, is before I'll do a scene, I'll start banging my chest and find some sort of tune and I'll hum it out and everything.
And it's to relax myself.
I'll do it for interviews sometimes, relax myself, get out of my head, find the rhythm, and then come into the scene.
Well, I was doing that before the scene with Leonardo and Wolf of Wall Street.
But then as soon as we go action, I'd stop and we do the scene.
We do the scene four times.
Got it.
Funny, perfect.
Let's move on.
Marty says, let's move on.
It was Leonardo's idea.
Leonardo raises his hand.
He goes, hang on a second.
He goes, what's that thing you're doing before every take?
And I told him what I just told you to relax and get my voice down.
Everything.
He goes, what if you did that in the scene?
I was like, great.
And the next take is the one you see in the movie.
Oh, no way.
Oh, that's a me.
That's amazing.
Well, that's a great thing about you.
You truly do have range.
I mean, like, it's not, it's not every guy who can do both the how to lose a guy in 10 days, that scene in Wolf of Wall Street, Dallas Buyers Club, and True Detective, right?
And speaking of True Detective, I got to ask, who is your best friend in Hollywood and why is it Woody Harrelson?
Woody has been a great friend of mine for a long time.
I mean, anybody who's a great guy.
I get younger.
Anybody who spent time with Woody is one of the last wild men, a perpetual eight-year-old, has no context of time.
And I mean, he can frustrate the heck out of you.
But he may show up three days late.
He may show up barefoot three days late to your wedding, but you can't get mad at him because if you showed up a week late for his wedding, he don't care.
So Woody always liked to say, hey, even if you're going to the Oscars, it's probably best to bring your bathing suit.
I can't imagine like the cast of characters that has been in and out of your life.
I wondered, though, like thinking about, yes, who do you hang out with as friends?
Anybody in Hollywood, like, are you friends with the Hollywood people or no, you're friends with the Texas people?
Well, I'm friends.
I've got some, I've made some very good friends in Hollywood.
I mean, but also some friends that I'm still friends with people that I was friends with in college.
I'm still friends with my buddy Cole Hauser was just in town.
He and I met on Days Confuse.
He's having a great time now, career-wise, with his role as Rip and Yellow.
Oh, we're developing a project together.
I still talk to Rory Cochran, who I met on Days Confused.
These are all friends of mine who are actors that I met in 1992.
Cole Hauser was also in Good Will Hunting, which is like crazy that that was him.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Young Cole Kinney, this red with the short red fro.
So I've made, I've made friends along the way and met some wonderful people in Hollywood as well.
Okay, but here's where I wanted to take it.
Is there anyone in Hollywood who you really admire, like whose values you admire?
I'm sure you admire the work of many people, but like, is there somebody who's living in a way that you think, yeah, that's hashtag goals right there?
Well, I always looked up to the way Paul Newman led his life as a talented actor on screen, married to Joanne all that time, the only marriage throughout.
The way he was able to be completely in the spotlight, but also live his own life.
I always admired that.
And like you, also then gave a bunch of time and money to charity.
Like didn't just rest on his laurels.
He gave over $100 million to charity thanks to Paul Newman.
And he made that.
That was a part of his life.
That was on his proverbial desk every Monday morning in his life.
He made that a part of his life.
That was his choice.
You know, people always go, yeah, but you've succeeded.
Gold and Life Goals00:02:39
You have the responsibility.
I think that's an easy place to go.
Don't go to responsibility.
If you've got the chance, you have the choice and the ability, but choices give us a lot more ownership than saying, oh, it's his responsibility.
I ought to do it.
But he did.
He did.
So I've looked up to his life.
You know, I learned something, though, from some people, and I won't say their names.
They were elder men in the business.
And this is when we first had, Camille and I first had children.
And I said to them, they had children, and I said to them, Hey, you know, you go on the road, you go to on-set for three months, five months, whatever.
Do you take your family and your kids with you?
And they said this version of this.
Look, it's either their friends or their dad.
And all of them that I talked to said they chose to let their kids stay back and have their lives in their schools and be with their friends and not come to work with that.
And all of them said, if I could do it again, I'd have made him come with and choose to be with dad.
And so when Camilla and I had kids before she pulled the goalie, she said, if we're going to do this, one condition, you go, we go.
And so it's been a real privilege for me as a father and a husband and the head of the family that anytime I go to work, the family comes with.
And that's been a major sacrifice for Camilla, but one that she would openly say, it reaps more rewards than it does deficits.
And it is getting harder now.
And you're seeing this with your kids getting older.
It's getting harder because they're older.
They have social sort of circles and rhythms and teams.
They're apart.
And I don't know what I'm going to do the next time.
You know, this last one, I just did what I could to get it to shoot in my hometown of Austin because I didn't want to take them away.
More of the kids.
More of the kids need to go into the next.
Ask more of the kids and shoot more down the road.
Let's be blunt.
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You and I have talked before about how Hillary Clinton labeled you a puppet of Putin.
A Russian asset.
Debbie Wasserman Schultz shamefully said the same.
And I saw recently President Trump withdrew Hillary Clinton's security clearance, which you had to do.
Yes.
That must have been a little fun.
Right?
Just a little fun.
I smiled.
Of course you did.
You're only human.
Yeah, I am.
So yeah, that's over for her.
And a number of other people, by the way, when you look at the 51 intelligence officials who signed that Hunter Biden disinformation letter and never apologized for it, never held themselves accountable for it.
Yes, Mark Zayd, you had Letitia James and others.
Somebody didn't even have one.
Well, some of them didn't have clearances, but they had access to classified information.
And so we took away that access for those who didn't have clearances.
Yes.
Okay.
And there are more to come.
And this is part of what we're doing in our investigative work as we go back and look, for example, at Crossfire Hurricane and how there were assistant U.S. attorneys who were knowingly using manufactured testimony that they would interview a witness,
for example, and know that the witness was lying to them, either because they set up the lie or they knew that the witness was lying, took that lie and used it as evidence to get a warrant under FISA to go and surveil on Americans, which is completely illegal.
And so these are the kinds of things those types of people, those assistant U.S. attorneys or those FBI agents that were involved in this kind of stuff, these are crimes that need to be prosecuted and these people need to be held accountable.
Will that happen?
That will happen.
Wow.
I mean, it's called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
That's right.
That's what it's doing.
It's a good reminder.
On the subject of saving money, you're doing some of that right here.
Yes.
And in part, it relates to enacting President Trump's DEI directives and pulling back on some of the nonsense that I know you and all the other agencies were spending money on, not you, you, but the Intel community.
Can you speak to a little bit of what you found?
Because you're doing your own Doge.
You're doing DIG.
Yes.
So that's under you.
You didn't out.
So this is not one of the areas that Elon and Doge came into.
You did it on your own, and I understand why.
There's a lot of information.
They are helping us.
They have incredible tools and a lot of lessons learned through the work that they've done.
And so they are helping us and allowing us the opportunity to be able to apply those here.
So we're not trying to reinvent the machine at all, and we're able to get after the things we're looking for.
So how much of a DEI programs and hires and so on?
So there was a DEI office that was immediately shut down, and that alone was a savings of around $20 million.
But the thing that we just announced today, in fact, was the closure of this Office of Human Capital, completely different part of the organization, and one that sounds like, okay, well, maybe this is like talent management.
You're trying to go out and see, well, where is the best talent and where are the gaps we need to fill, which is what I thought.
But it turns out that it was an office where the previous administration kind of hid a bunch of their DEI people, knowing that this action was going to be taken by President Trump.
And there was a slush fund there that they would use to fund people millions of dollars to go to DEI conferences and talk to other DEI people.
And so we shut that down at a savings of $150 million today.
But the thing that I think a lot of people would be surprised by, when people talk about DEI and you hear, you know, whether it's CNN, MSNBC, they talk about DEI and they criticize the president for his action and the actions that we are all taking to get rid of this, claiming that we're against diversity and all of this other crap.
When I came in here, I was able to talk with some of the people who work here.
DEI was such a priority that it was baked into the incentive structure for people to advance professionally here.
And I would imagine it was very similar across the federal government, where some employees told me that they were put in a position where they had to spend half of their time working on DEI initiatives in order for them to be able to put it on their annual evaluation and therefore be noted as, oh, you are more likely to get promoted if you are spending this significant amount of time on this diversity, equity, inclusion initiatives.
And for me, I'm like, how in the world would you spend half of your time on that?
Right.
What were you creating?
And I don't really know the answer to that, but I do know the answer to our national security on that question.
Because what that means is in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and we have people here who work from all across of these 18 intelligence elements being put in a position where they're told, if you want to get promoted, if you want to advance in your career, the priority is not, are you delivering the best quality intelligence assessments and analysis to best inform the president's most critical decisions?
No, you will advance professionally if you show that you're dedicating half of your day towards these DEI initiatives.
Your implicit bias.
Exactly, exactly.
And so when we look at why this was a priority for the president, this is not some superficial thing.
There are national security implications to what the Biden administration was doing in centering almost their entire administration around DEI initiatives.
You can take this towards any domestic agency.
Look at the Department of Education.
Shouldn't they be focused on educating our kids?
Well, wasn't there a group, which Intel agency was it that had the people talking about transgender surgeries and non-binary this and there's the National Security Agency.
Yeah, there's sex groups, polyamory.
Yeah.
I mean on and on all of this.
This is a great example.
So there was someone who snuck into that chat that was not a part of, that was not an employee there.
And they screenshotted what they saw and leaked it out on X.
And again, this is a chat group that was created and administered by the NSA, one of the premier intelligence collection entities that we have.
And it was obscene.
It was obscene.
Yes, it was about all of those things.
It was talking about sex toys and sex tricks for people who had gone through some kind of transgender surgery or something.
During the workday.
This is during the workday on an intelligence-hosted work chat group.
And the supervisors, obviously, as soon as I found out about it, I said, anybody who's involved with this is getting fired and getting their security clearance revoked, which there were some who was like, oh, gosh, aren't you?
Like, that seems extreme.
Like, no.
Imagine you're in any office and you're having these kinds of sexually explicit conversations in the workplace.
It is highly, I don't care what your sexual orientation or whatever your private choices are.
This cannot be happening in the workplace and it must not be happening in our premier intelligence agency that has people who have the highest clearances that anyone can hold.
The plot thickens as many of the leaders feigned shock and surprise at this revelation.
Well, this chat group had existed for over two years that this kind of stuff was happening in.
And again, this is where transparency and accountability matter so much.
As soon as I made that announcement that we will be investigating and holding these people accountable, I started hearing from people who are within the workforce saying, I work at the NSA.
I filed a written report with evidence of what was going on in these chat groups a year ago, two years ago when this thing first kicked up.
And basically, because of President Biden's DEI initiatives, they were essentially told, shut up.
It's none of your business.
Wow.
And then there was the cover-up.
And then there was the leak.
So this is one example of many how we can see what the ramifications have been when we have in the last administration one that is seemingly focused on everything but the most important things.
Speaking of the last administration, one question for you on SignalGate.
As I heard you say this recently, is this the first administration to use Signal for confidential chats?
Absolutely not.
I mean, you actually saw something that told you this was in fact being used by the Biden administration, who are out there all over X and other social media, ripping everyone who was on that SignalGate thread to shreds.
That is correct.
So there's no question in your mind this was used during the Biden administration by officials?
I know for certain that it was to include national security officials.
Is there another way to communicate?
Like, are we stuck with Signal?
So the main means of communication for all of us, like in this building, this entire building is a secure facility.
That means that if you go outside of this lobby, there's a bunch of lock boxes over there where you've got to lock your phone in.
You've got to lock your Apple Watch or your Aura ring.
Anything.
Wow.
Anything that transmits a signal gets locked up by everyone who works here and everyone who visits here before you leave this lobby.
How are you supposed to count your steps?
Good luck.
Take the stairs.
The old-fashioned way.
Exactly.
But so the vast majority of the communication that happens is through secure telephones and secure computers and things that are built in to our work environments.
However, I do have to leave the building at times and things have to keep moving and rolling.
Same goes for those who work in the White House and those who work across the administration.
So at times for practical purposes, you have to be able to communicate on the go.
Signal has been recognized by the federal government during the Biden administration, by the way, in December of 2024, as the preferred messaging app because it provides that end-to-end encryption that makes it, you know, nothing is completely secure, but it is the most secure option if you need to use it.
You feel like it was unfair to Pete and Mike Walsh?
I mean, they took the brunt of it.
Yeah, I mean, you know, it shouldn't have happened.
There are sensitive conversations that occur in these Signal chats, but ultimately it was not at all what those who are opposing the president's policies and those in the media made it out to be.
And I can tell you that there are some of the most vocal critics of that whole situation who also use Signal and communicate things that they would not want released publicly as well.
Not surprised.
Exactly.
As I've listened to you over this hour, I've had one thought recur to me over and over and over, and it is first female president.
That is what I, like, I look at you and I see it.
And I know they put you through the meat grinder the last time, but that was the other side.
Now you've crossed over.
And I just wonder.
Thank you for not saying transition.
People use that word.
It's like, okay, that's one of those words that's like for a certain thing.
But notwithstanding how rough that was when you ran for president the first time, have you ruled out ever doing it again?
Could we potentially see a Tulsi 2028 try?
I will never rule out any opportunity to serve my country.
I would not have, if we had talked a year ago, the thought would not have crossed my mind that I would be here and that we would be having this conversation.
My decisions in my life have always been made around how can I best be of service to God?
How can I best be of service to our country?
And that is what has led me here.
I'm grateful for this opportunity and I will continue to chase those opportunities where I can make the most positive impact and be of service.
And now you and I sit here having done something the two of us back in 2016 never would have thought we would have done, which was stood up on a stage and endorsed Donald Trump.
Now you're working for him.
I endorsed him too.
It was so great.
I was there.
I remember.
It was such a powerful moment and speech that you delivered because of your history with us.
Very generous to even mention that.
What you did for President Trump was huge.
And seeing you up there and announcing your partisan change, you were with Trump.
That was like the team of rivals or the Marvel universe coming together.
The Avengers.
Yeah, the Avengers.
You're one of them.
You're one of the most, and the gray streak is part of it, and that just works.
But I wonder if you do decide to do something in the future, running for president or individual executive leadership.
What have you learned from him?
What would you want to take away from the kind of leader Trump is?
He's a very bold leader.
And as we see, he's making decisions without care for what the media chirps about him or what his so-called critics may say about him.
And he's quite masterful at it, by the way.
You know, he's been so effective at connecting with the American people in ways that I think a lot of the politicians or the so-called political pundits here in Washington, D.C. never really understood and maybe a lot of them still don't.
But it really comes from a place of care, his care for the American people.
He doesn't need to do this.
He didn't need to put himself through all this.
He didn't need to put himself in a position where there were two assassination attempts on his life.
And the kind of bold change that we're seeing happening now across the government, it's never happened like this under any other president.
So I really respect his boldness and his courage in doing things that sometimes people don't understand or see how it's going to turn out.
Those are things we see in you too.
Boldness, courage, and you share something else with him, which is fearlessly independent.
The Hardest Life Lessons00:13:09
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This whole thing is about your journey with Emma and trying to conceive a baby.
And I mean, no detail is spared.
Yeah.
But so it's very personal.
It's unusually personal for me.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Did you, did you run it by her first?
So the thing was, is, yeah, at first, like, you know, this is the most like male thing, like, but it's, I assumed that the reason why we couldn't is because it was her fault, right?
And I talk about it in the special where I'm like, she was really concerned it was her fault and I was really concerned it was her fault.
Like we were all really concerned.
Obviously her fault.
Yeah, because like men, we have this like confidence in our sperm that like there's no real reason why, but we just know, right?
Like every time I've ever had sex with a girl, I was like, oh my God, this is going to be great.
Like, what should we do?
How do we, you know, calling the next month?
I know she's pregnant, guaranteed, which I now know is a waste.
And once we found out that her ovaries were perfect and my sperm was horrible, it actually made it a lot easier for me to talk about.
Really?
Yeah, because I think the reason why like anybody who has fertility issues, one, it's very isolating because you're so protective of the person that you love that you don't, a lot of women feel a lot of shame around.
Yep, true.
And at first, I felt like real shame.
I was like, does God not want me to have a child?
Like, I was like, I didn't understand it.
Like, I think I'm like a pretty good person and I'm kind to people.
And I'm like, why is this happening?
Like, what the fuck is going on?
And yeah, so I get that.
And a lot of women, if they are struggling, they're just like, they feel like it's, I don't feel very stigmatized.
Right.
And, but once she was perfect and I was fucked up, I could get on stage and it was really cathartic to talk about it.
And then once I started talking about it, I literally thought that I was like, this was like a one in like 10 million thing.
Oh, wow.
The second I started talking about all my friends started telling me that they're doing IVF.
Oh, wow.
And like all these people in the audience would hit me up afterwards and be like, oh, yeah, same thing happened.
And I was like, what the fuck?
Is this like the last taboo project?
How did anybody ever get pregnant before IVF?
Because everybody's doing it.
Dude, it is like, it's unbelievable.
It's almost like I was like, does anybody really get abortion?
Like, it's so hard to get pregnant.
Why is this an issue?
How often do these athletes have unprotected sex that they have 20 kids?
Like, I couldn't believe it.
It was unfathomable.
So, but then it became like, yeah, as brutal as it was, there was these kind of funny moments, that being one of them.
The humility.
Going into the room with the lady.
We just talked to the audience.
You know, Doug came in to say hi to Andrew in the commercial break and we were bonding over our shared experience because he and I did IVF with our kids too.
And Doug joked that after he had to donate the sample, first he said he was going to wear like a red crushed velvet smoking jacket on his way in.
And on the way out, he was just going to be like, that was fantastic.
I was amazing.
Yeah, I was always thinking about like, do I make noises in there?
Like, how uncomfortable do I make it for the other guys at the clinic?
Like just screaming random things.
Yes.
Destiny street.
Just like crazy.
But yeah, it's like, I was crazy.
It was like a walk of shame when you're walking by all the other guys there.
Everybody's there.
Oh, God.
I know what you're about to do.
It's so humbling.
You're just sitting in this room.
Like all of you are in there.
You're like, so why did they make you go in to give the sperm sample?
Couldn't they?
So I did it from home once.
Okay.
The whole, I don't even, I haven't even put like a lot of the stuff in it, but like the whole journey was brutal.
So the first one I did from home, which was like, I'm in the room.
My wife like hands me the thing.
Like it's like homework.
And she's like, okay, I'll give you 30 minutes.
You go do your thing.
I'm going to go outside or I'm going to do the dishes.
So like I hear her doing the dishes in the background where I'm like being mandated to masturbate.
And I'm like on our bed.
Like I don't think I've ever masturbated on a bed.
Like I'm just on our bed and the bed is made perfectly.
Like everything is like set up.
And I remember at one point, like, I'm just like, I don't know.
This is like so weird.
And I like looked up and the TV was off.
So it was just a black screen.
So it's a perfect mirror of him.
Oh, no.
And I was just like, this is the saddest day of my life.
I'm sitting Indian style off my bed trying to make a sample of Conus Cup.
We send that sample in.
It comes back and it's like, it's, it's not good.
And they're like, not only are they not swimming, they're like shaped weird.
And I was like, I was like a little defensive.
So I was like, well, could that be from like the speed that they hit the cup?
Like maybe, you know, it's the blunt force trauma kind of warped them a little bit.
The flow is just too strong.
It was too strong.
That's what, that's what it is.
And they're like, no, that's definitely not it.
And I was like, okay.
And they go, they go, well, why don't you do this for like a couple months, wear baggy underwear, ice your balls every single day.
Oh, ice them.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Whoa.
Yeah.
I guess that's a big thing.
Don't drink anymore.
Don't smoke anymore and take these pills and then we'll try it again in like a month or two.
And I did that and we tried it again and it got worse.
No.
And I was like, why do you think that is?
And the doctor's like, we've never seen this before.
There's some pride in Matt.
It's got to be a little.
I'm setting records.
I told a story one time when Dave Rubin was on, but Doug had the funniest experience there where they make you ejaculate like 24 hours before the real sample that's going to be like your future kid.
They want you to clean the house.
It's like, I can't remember if it's 24 or 48 hours.
48 hours before.
Okay.
So, but they want it to be 48.
Yes.
And they don't really want it to be 46 or 44.
Because you need the amount of time to build up the new batch.
Yes.
So like timing does matter.
It just so happened that on one of ours, we were visiting my, my Nana, who was literally like 90 at the time.
And we were playing dominoes and I was like, oh, Doug, it's time.
He was like, what?
I'm like, you got to go in there right now.
My poor husband.
And, you know, it's like one of these older persons' homes where like there's five inches between the bottom of the door and the ground.
You can hear every piece of conversation.
The dominoes, like, you're palming the double five, you know, and Doug says, so is he?
It's horrible, poor Doug.
This is the thing about this.
You know what you got to do?
It's a, it's, the, this, the journey is brutal when you're in it.
It is the hardest thing that you'll go through in your life.
So it's definitely the hardest thing we went through.
And, um, but after the fact, it is hysterical.
Yes.
Like there.
You can't believe what you've been through.
Yeah.
And like, there are so many of these things that are so funny.
And the beautiful thing about having a child is you get this like amnesia for what you went through to get there.
And I think that's actually kind of like built into our DNA so we keep making them.
I totally agree.
You know, like same women have been saying that for eons because of the pain of labor.
And it's so, you know, devastating.
And then you forget all about it.
I never had labor because I had three C-sections, but my friends tell me it's extremely painful.
Oh, my, Emma was in there for 24 hours and then she had the C-section because the baby's heart rate dropped.
Oh, God, that's scary.
Yeah, the whole thing is terrible.
When you were doing the shots before to prepare for the IVF, like did you have any fun mood swings or anything?
Oh, yeah.
I was actually fine.
I did not have weird mood swings, but it was very funny because Doug does not like he, his mom got this terrible cut in her leg and it was so brutal.
And Doug was right there.
He bandaged it up.
He put the medicine on.
I was like, I can't take that kind of injury.
But you pull out a needle and Doug is one of those like, oh, so he, so he can kill shots.
But he had to at the beginning.
As it turned out, he didn't have to, but we thought he did.
Yeah.
Because in the beginning, they really make it up into a thing.
Like you got to mix the compound and it's like kind of back in a hard spot to reach.
You got to ice the area.
We're like, oh my God, like our future family depends on this.
And Doug was in a hot, like a cold sweat.
And the superintendent of our building at the time, his name was Lance.
And they're like, it's very important that your wife have a partner that helps her.
And Doug is like, this is going to be very hard for Lance.
Yeah.
But he did it.
He did it.
He got it through.
But honestly, by the third child, you know, Doug was no part of it.
I was like, I know, I need no ice.
I'm good.
Boom.
We're done.
Yeah.
After the race, it is crazy that they make you mix it at home.
So, anybody who's not familiar, they give you these two, I guess, hormonal compounds, and you have to put them together in the syringe.
In just the right proportions, I'm like, why isn't this done at the lab?
And then we just hit it.
Like, you don't have to make the Kit Kat, right?
Like, make the bar and then send it to me.
And I remember like watching my wife do these things, making sure it's the right amount.
You got to push a little out so no air gets in there.
Right, right.
So you don't give yourself an air bubble, like life or death.
Literally.
And she's like, Did I push too much out?
Will I not get it?
Is this, but there, yeah, there was fun.
I mean, Emma would get like, it would really get her going.
Would she get angry or just overly emotional?
Oh, angry.
But we didn't know that that was the cause.
So, like, I remember we got into it at a Japanese restaurant.
You don't realize how quiet those restaurants are until you're having like a loud blow up.
Like, and you know, the only thing interrupting the blow up, because everybody is already quiet at a Japanese restaurant.
And then once you have like a verbal altercation, they're really quiet.
Oh, I love when somebody has a fight and I'm nearby.
Oh, my God.
Doug and I, like, he'll start talking.
I'll be like, be quiet.
This is too important to you.
We got to lock in.
Everybody was locked in.
They're just slurping Udon and watching us.
And the only thing that would interrupt it is like when a new person would walk in, and you know, the whole restaurant has to go, Hasimashem!
Emma would feel like they were interrupting our argument.
So, so we're fighting Hustimase.
Emma goes, Are you kidding me?
And then back to yelling at me.
It's just amazing.
Well, so you weren't that guy who was like, She's going through a lot.
These are just her emotions.
I'm just going to, I'm going to let everything slide.
I'm not going to get mad about anything.
We didn't know that it was the case.
So we didn't know until literally that night.
I go, Hey, did we do the shot?
We did the shot today, right?
And she goes, Oh shit, we're walking down.
We're on Kenmare Street.
That's when you put it together that she's hormonal.
And then, and then she was also like, Oh, fuck, I guess I'm like really reactive to this.
And then from then on, we stopped going to Japanese restaurants.
And then, how about after she had the baby?
Did she have like because you're sleep deprived, you're very hormonal.
It's the most insane thing.
If you're, did you breastfeed?
Yeah.
Okay.
That is the, I think that this is, I think that is the most difficult part of child rearing.
Is the if you are breastfeeding full time, like meaning every two hours.
Yeah.
That is insane.
Yeah, it's a lot.
That is insane.
Every two hours.
So you're waking up.
I don't think a lot of people know this.
You're waking up every two hours in the night.
You don't get more than an hour of sleep at a time.
It's truly like an astronaut training situation.
Yeah.
No, it's brutal, but then it lets up a little.
When it lets up, there's this beautiful bonding experience that you have with your child.
And like, it's something even now, like, Emma's still breastfeeding.
And it's just this thing that she's like, she doesn't even want to let go of it.
Yeah.
Well, then you get to like the six-month mark where the baby can start having like smaller, like solid foods and they're still having breast milk.
And you're at the point now where like you're producing more milk than ever.
And yet the baby's somewhat getting a little independent.
Yep.
And the weight comes shredding off.
That's the best moment where you're like, I'm making tons of milk.
All these calories are coming off for free.
Oh, because your body is burning calories.
But your baby doesn't need as much milk from you as he needed it five months because now he's starting to eat food.
Right, right.
But your body doesn't know that.
are still burning like 800 calories a day.
You're like, oh my God, I'm out of a waste again.
There's some unnormal ass.
Thank you, sweet baby.
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I hear we have something in common, and that is our mutual love for Megan Markle.
Yes.
I hear you're ready to endorse her for president.
I like her now.
I've come around on her because I, since I'm a little kid, love con artists.
I think they're great.
I think they're fun.
They're an important part of America and the tapestry of our country.
They, to me, exude a kind of effortless humor.
They're very funny.
And I find her to be a great con artist, one of the great confides.
You know, this is someone who came to prominence marrying into the royal family, claiming they were racist, claiming she wanted to dedicate herself to uplifting young women around the world, and is now selling jam at Target.
Yes.
That's beautiful.
She moved to the richest and whitest area of our country.
Yes.
Absolutely.
And makes honey.
There's nothing better than that from where she started to where she is now.
And that's what I think a lot of it is.
I think a lot of people that claim to be really evolved people who really want to help other people are just trying.
She just wants a line of consumer goods.
Yeah.
That's all she wants.
We actually give it to her.
We just looked this up.
So she, there was a sound bait of her saying she really wanted her merch that she's selling to be prestige.
Yes.
Not prestigious.
She wanted to be prestige.
Yeah.
But at like a price point everyone can afford.
Yeah.
So we looked it up.
She's got a raspberry spread under the as ever label.
Love it.
Raspberry spread.
You can get it for $14.
Or you can get it at Walmart under the smuckers label for $3.47.
Right.
Herbal lemon ginger tea, as ever, will charge you $12.
Or you can get it from Yogi for $4.
Right.
46 cents.
Shortbread Cookie Mix as ever will charge you $14.
My Better Batch, which is high-end, $7.99.
Then there's wildflower honey with honeycomb.
As ever, $28.
Amazon, $11.
And then there's Crepe Mix, which you can get from her for $14, or you can get it from New Hope Mills for $5.
So you tell me whether this person has actually landed the plane on prestige, but totally affordable.
Well, what's brilliant about what she's doing is she knows people want to spend money and spending money makes them feel like they're getting something that's better, even though it might not necessarily be true.
And I think it's brilliant.
You can tell when you watch the show, she thinks people out just we're all animals.
And that's her view.
She just thinks we're all monsters and we're all just kind of pigs in the mud.
And that she's helping us with jam and honey.
It's also very weirdly British, isn't it?
Yeah, well, her little flowers sprinkled her garden.
It's kind of oddly British for somebody who went over there and realized it was just a racist, horrible place.
There's all that jam and tea and honey.
And why is she using all the like the royal crown on her stationery?
I thought she hated being a royal.
I thought she wanted to eschew the royal life and come back to America.
Well, it seems it's just very interesting.
And seeing it all happen in real time fills me with just, it fills me with a recognition, like a, I recognize how much this was the plan the whole time.
And you gotta, it's got, you gotta give your hats off to her.
It's hard to enhance your brand that quickly.
Like get your name out there in a newsletter.
No one needs honey right now.
No one.
No one needs jam.
There's not one systemic racist problem that she's that like no one needs jam.
There's not one person wrongly accused of something or whatever, doesn't have money for a lawyer that's looking for elderberries or wildflowers or whatever the hell she's talking about.
The only people that are concerned with this stuff are people like she lives in Mary Montezito that's so wealthy, they're not even on earth anymore.
And it's a beautiful area.
It's a great area.
But they float around and they have tea and they pick flowers.
They live in a fairy tale.
She makes sun tea.
Yeah, she makes sun tea.
Like we all have time to do.
Yeah, she just they kind of sit around in their backyards and they enjoy this and they smell lavender and stuff like that.
That's not how you're living in LA right now.
It's not how we're living.
No, we're we're in we're sitting by our doors with guns like normal people.
Yeah, we're sitting by the door with a gun waiting for someone to come in.
That's how we're living.
And check the sun tea.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No one's making honey.
If you have honey in your house, you're using it as a weapon.
You don't have a local beekeeper?
No, there's no local beekeeper.
There's no gardens.
They've all burned.
Yes.
Yeah.
Well, I have a treat for you because in addition to her new Netflix show, she has launched yet another podcast.
Thank God.
This one is about founders.
How did she say that?
Is it all female founders?
Yes.
Please.
I think it's all female founders.
Is it female founders?
Female founders, right?
Professions of a female founder.
God, what are they thinking about these female founders?
Oh, here you go.
What are they doing?
She starts with herself because she now considers herself a founder.
And it's hard to find when you are married to a prince.
How do you start a business?
That's her real question because the struggle she had to go through being married to a prince and being one of the most famous people in the world.
How do you start a business when you're rich and famous?
Your castle's too small.
It's hard.
Your grandmother, your spouse's grandmother doesn't seem to really like you and he dies.
Yeah.
I mean, like your one greatest connection is now out.
Thank God, because I want to know how this all happened.
And I want to get into the mind of the female founder.
Here we go.
Here's this founder discussing, I think.
Remember when she pretended to like poor people?
That lasted a few weeks.
I know.
I'm sex workers.
I remember that with her inspo messages.
Here she is on her new podcast.
Let's be honest.
Launching a business, it can be so overwhelming.
Even with the best of teams, it'll keep you up at night.
For example, a month ago, I was absolutely consumed with packaging.
Boxes.
That's all I could think about.
And I would sit there doing the unboxing in my head.
Is there tissue paper?
What about the packing peanuts?
But they're biodegradable.
And where does the sticker go?
And hold on.
And what size the box is going to be?
You know, that's not going to fit all the skills.
Oh my gosh.
And then someone says, but you don't want to brand the outside of the box because of porch pirates.
Had never heard that before.
What's a porch pirate?
And then I'm sitting there and I'm like, does any of this actually matter?
Of course it matters.
It matters at the beginning, but how much does it matter?
Oh my God.
Yeah.
I mean, it's, well, she's also, it's, you know, she's kept up at night because she's, you know, half the staff quit.
That's right.
They quit.
On any given day.
On any given day, the staff will quit because she just, you know, launches into a tirade and for whatever reason, they feel unsafe.
She's been accused multiple times of being a bullying abuser.
Well, she's throwing honey at people's heads and stuff.
So she's kept up at night wondering about what lawsuits were in because of the abusive behavior towards the staff.
I feel like that, didn't that sound bite just hit so many of the leftist boxes?
Like, are they biodegradable?
Yes.
And what does the packaging be?
Well, what I like about her, I actually, I've gone the other way now because now that she's coming out as a monster, I like, like, I'm actually on board now.
I'm into it.
I'm into it because now, by the way, she's no longer even, there's no longer even an attempt.
It's such a thinly veiled attempt to be this conscientious person who, you know, she's really just saying, like, I'm a founder.
Yeah.
I'm a founder and I'm a big business tycoon and it's tough for me.
Can I tell you, she's not the only extremely rich woman who, you know, in her case, it's questionable, but in a lot of these other women's cases, their husbands are multi-millionaires or billionaires.
And then the women like open a charity or like give their money to somebody.
And then they're like, I'm an entrepreneur.
I'm an entrepreneur.
It's like, okay.
Bill Belichick Interview00:15:33
I'm a founder.
Look, I appreciate it.
I've connected people with jam.
Like, I see that your husband made billions of dollars.
Right.
But the fact that you spent some of it doesn't make you a founder.
Well, it's also she never cared.
You know, it was all about in the beginning, it was all about like unwinding the systems of oppression.
Yeah.
Remember that?
That's done, didn't you know?
Remember that?
You saw that.
If you remember that, it was like she would go to like a third world country and there'd be a bunch of kids dancing and she'd take a photo with them.
Now it seems much more about like, she's looking at like Gwyneth Poucher, what Gwyneth Poucher did with her store.
Yes.
Goop or whatever it's called.
I think it's goop.
Goop.
Yeah.
And I think she's looking at that and going, that's what she wants to be.
She wants to be Martha Stewart.
Yeah.
Although what I found out after the fact was she launched her show with showing you how to make this one recipe.
It's like one pot pasta.
You make it on the stove.
And then everybody flooded Twitter with the fact that that apparently is a Martha Stewart recipe.
Sure.
That's apparently very well known in Martha Stewart family.
Yeah.
So even the inaugural episode is cheating off of somebody else's.
Well, I mean, you got to hand it to her.
She knows that we don't have a memory.
Yes.
The country doesn't have a memory.
We have a fatally short memory.
And we're kind of tolerant of however people want to reintroduce themselves in the moment.
Yes.
So she understands America.
I didn't know.
Better than I do, or maybe you do, because she gets it.
We love the huckster.
We root for the huckster.
We root for kind of the criminal sometimes.
And she's kind of assuming that role of going, this is who I am today.
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Hey, everyone.
It's me, Megan Kelly.
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It's called the Megan Kelly Channel, and it is where you will hear the truth unfiltered with no agenda and no apologies.
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We got to talk about Bill Belichick.
You ripped him.
Okay, I mean, I thought it was elder abuse.
I like, honestly, what I saw there was Dr. Jill.
I had Dr. Jill vibes, this overly aggressive younger partner who's in this, like, apparently, he looked infirm to me the way he was answering those questions.
Like, man, who's being taken advantage of?
And all I could think was his family needs to do an intervention and get this woman off of his back.
But can you set the stage for us on like, what's happening with this guy?
I'll start by saying I am a diehard New England Patriots fan.
Yeah, you're from Boston.
Diehard.
I love Bill Belichick.
He's like my guy.
He's brought so many championships.
I know him personally.
He lives on Nantucket.
I live on Nantucket.
I've met Jordan.
So it's a very awkward thing to see.
I also watched that show, CBS Sunday morning with the interview.
It's like my feel-good show.
I just like it.
I like nature.
There's some politics, whatever.
But for the most part, that is a drink your coffee, eat your bagel, feel good show.
So I was not expecting this interview.
I was squirming.
I don't know what to expect.
I don't know what to think about it.
It certainly was awkward.
I've heard people say, you know, is she taking advantage of him?
Well, he's taking advantage of her.
He's sleeping with a very attractive young girl, 50 years younger.
I don't know why she's so involved.
Like, I really don't.
I've met her.
She's nice enough.
She's running the whole show.
I've known that a couple months ago.
How so?
Like, she, every, every piece of Bill Belichick business goes through her.
Like, she is basically let she would act.
Like, if that was maybe not in a romantic relationship and that's his PR manager.
Or like an agent.
Yeah, nobody's blinking at that.
Like, that happens, I'm sure, a lot with celebs.
We're not going to talk about it.
Now, you combine it with Bill Belichick, who's gruff with the media and generally always handles himself.
It's just a very awkward situation.
The age gap is huge, clearly, but she runs the show.
There's rumors hard knocks for HBO was supposed to do North Carolina.
She shut that down.
That's where he's the coach now.
Yeah, he's the coach there.
So it's just, it's such a juxtaposition of a guy who seemingly had no media savvy, but was always just straightforward, no time for the media now, having his life run by a 25-year-old.
It certainly is eye-opening for a guy like me.
I also know I'm going to run into probably them in Nantucket, and I'm going to be carrying my watermelon out of stop and shop.
And I don't want it to be an awkward conversation.
You're playing it all on me.
You're playing it all on me.
But it went super viral.
I mean, it's all anybody's talking about.
It's all because it's just such a departure from how a sports fan, Patriot fan, everybody thought of Bill Belichick.
So explain that to me because we watched the, I come into this like at a left field.
I know who he is, of course.
Even I know who Bill Bellich is.
He's the greatest coach of all time.
But I don't follow his, you know, I didn't know about the girlfriend and all that.
To me, he looked out of it.
Like he seemed confused.
But I've never, ever seen him.
So I've seen a lot of people like, he's wearing a holy sweatshirt.
That's what he does.
Like that, that is his look.
Does he talk like that?
Like, does he look confused generally?
He generally, if he doesn't want to answer a question, he grumbles and he says, I'm not going to answer that.
He's famous for not answering questions.
He's never media savvy.
Him going on a book tour, which is what he was doing, seems like the last thing he would ever do in a million years.
If she wasn't there, I would anticipate him just being like, I'm not going to answer it.
He's rarely conducting interviews that he has no interest in.
He just doesn't care for the media or what they think.
The thing that he said that was the most accurate is probably like, I don't care what people think about me.
And clearly he doesn't.
But I've never seen him defer to anybody.
Like that, that is the most shocking.
Yeah, like if someone else is speaking for him, that never happens.
He speaks for himself loudly through his actions clearly and is always like a general in the commander of the room, really.
So to see him basically give what appears to be control of his life to her is shocking.
Well, most of the audience has probably seen the clip by now, but just in case they haven't, let's play it for them.
Let's play the one where she interrupts.
This is Bill Belichick on CBS This Morning with anchor Tony Docapool and his 24-year-old girlfriend, who's 49 years younger than he is, interrupting the interview.
Watch.
The other change for Belichick is 24-year-old Jordan Hudson, his creative muse, as he writes in his book.
Make sure that that's the Jordan was a constant presence during our interview.
You have Jordan right over there.
Everybody in the world seems to be following this relationship.
They've got an opinion about your private life.
It's got nothing to do with them, but they're invested in it.
How do you deal with that?
Never been too worried about what everybody else thinks.
Just try to do what I feel like is best for me and what's right.
How did you guys meet?
That's the truth.
Not talking about this.
No.
No.
It's a topic neither one of them is comfortable commenting on.
Okay, so now she said, he's, how did you meet?
And she interjects, not commenting about this.
And there are reports that she actually interjected multiple times.
CBS only chose to show the one just to give the audience a true sense of what this thing is.
And it's about the book.
And to CBS's defense, that quote that she is the muse is in the book.
It's in the book.
Yeah, exactly.
So now this fight started unfolding online.
This is via the Daily Mail, involving Belichick's daughter-in-law.
She's married to his son, and her name is Jennifer.
She's married to his son, Steve Belichick.
Some people were defending Jordan, the girlfriend.
For example, somebody posted, oh, former New England Patriot star Julian Edelman.
Saw that.
You know him?
Yep.
Stuck up for her saying she was merely acting how any PR person would.
Comedian Nikki Glazer also defended Hudson, saying 100% she's acting as his publicist.
Publicists do this during interviews.
People are out for blood.
And first of all, I'll tell you what Jennifer, the daughter-in-law, said, but I have done countless interviews, countless.
I've both given as the subject of them and done, conducted.
Literally has this, never.
I've never seen this happen.
Never.
The PR people will come to you before the interview and they will beg you not to cover or ask after for it to be cut.
Yes, exactly.
That's their job.
As a journalist, and Tony Docapool is a journalist, you would say, thank you for your input.
That's it.
You would never make a promise ever.
It's literally considered unethical to say, I won't ask about that.
You know, at most I've ever heard somebody say is, we can't make you any promises, but we're not that interested in that subject.
Like a wink and a half.
But never, never has a PR person ever interviewed, interjected into an interview.
In the middle of it.
No, it's very unhappy.
People asking, no, if someone doesn't want to talk about it, we generally want, because people generally want to talk about what you are asking not to talk about, so we won't do it.
It's strange.
I don't agree with that.
It was.
It's different rules if it's like a host.
You know what I mean?
If you're sitting to somebody who doesn't consider themselves a journalist, very different.
And by the way, this is how talk shows get away with it all the time.
I've been asked to go on a bunch of talk shows, including Tamron Hall's, like five years ago.
And her executive producer said, we'll give you all the questions in advance.
I'm like, I'm not doing that.
I felt like I don't want that.
Yeah, right.
So she got away with it because they consider that a talk show, but she's not, I guess, calling herself a journalist anymore, or at least wasn't for that show.
Okay.
So then Jennifer, Belichick's daughter-in-law, weighs in and says, publicists act in a professional manner and do not storm offset delaying an interview.
Yeah, so I know them too.
And that probably tells you everything you need to know about how the family, and that's natural.
There's a story that came out in the New York Post, I think, yesterday, that she accumulated like $10 million of real estate very quickly.
So I'm sure the family, based on that quote, is a little like, what is going on here?
And it's just, this is a guy that is not a pushover.
He has built his reputation on being like a gruff kind of guy who needs everything particular and detail-oriented.
It's just very strange to see.
He's the guy Tim Walsh was trying to convince us he was.
No jazz hands.
Yeah.
Football.
I don't even know if even he was the guy.
Man.
Yeah, he was trying to, I think, be more like a Gronk guy, but who knows?
Well, there's more.
So he, you know about this because I saw you commented on it.
So Bill Belichick posted a statement on the UNC University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is where he coaches, right?
Chapel Hill.
And he wrote as follows.
I agreed to speak with CBS Sunday morning to promote my new book, The Art of Winning.
Prior to the interview, I clearly communicated with my publicist.
So he's not even say he told Tony Docapool or the CBS publicist.
I clearly communicated with my publicist at Simon ⁇ Schuster that any promotional interviews I participated in would agree to focus solely on the contents of the book.
Unfortunately, that expectation was not honored during the interview.
I was surprised when unrelated topics were introduced, and I repeatedly expressed to the reporter, Tony Docapool, and the producers that I preferred to keep the conversation centered on the book.
After this occurred several times, Jordan, with whom I share both a personal and professional relationship, stepped in to reiterate that point and help refocus the discussion.
She was not deflecting any specific question or topic.
I'm sorry, Bill, but she was, but was simply doing her job to ensure the interview stayed on track.
Some of the clips made it appear as though we were avoiding the question of how we met, but we've been open about the fact that Jordan and I met on a flight to Palm Beach in 2021.
And it goes on for them saying these are just selectively edited clips, suggested a false narrative that Jordan was attempting to control the conversation, which is simply not true.
Yeah, I'm like white knuckling the table.
In my years following Bill Belichick, I would say my knowledge of him, there's roughly 0% chance he wrote that.
He just doesn't care generally what anyone thinks about him.
So to go write that, my guess would be Jordan wrote that.
The fact it is on the North Carolina website is insane.
Right.
It's just insane.
It's shocking.
Again, it's, I'm speaking to all Patriot fans, Boston people.
This guy, like if you could have predicted this, people would say you're living in a bizarre world.
It's just so strange and this long email, crazy, the public statement, crazy.
But I'm not even sure he knows that was written.
You're right.
Like, he may not.
I saw a clip of you online.
I don't even know the podcast.
Forgive me.
You'll tell us what it is.
But I loved it so much.
I wanted you to say it here and expand on it.
Here it is.
Watch.
Women want to be able, they want to be taken care of.
I know this is like super provocative, but like deep down, they want a man to be able to provide for them financially.
Should a man pay on the first date?
100%.
Like what kind of a whoosh beta male is splitting the check?
Like, who are you?
It's like, I'm just sorry.
It's like debt and like scrub dishes before a woman.
I split the check quite a lot.
So I'm sorry.
I don't mean to offend you.
You guys are great.
That's incomprehensible to me.
I think that's.
To me, I thought it was a great financial decision.
I've just okay.
So from your prism, I totally get that.
And like, you have really good financial discipline.
I'm sorry.
Like, I would be so humiliated if I did.
I mean, I find that to be like the greatest beta male, like humiliation.
Save money?
No, no, to like the idea that a woman that you're trying to court.
Now, if it's like a friend of face.
As a first date, you don't even know if it's just like quality.
It's just not mad.
I'm sorry.
By the way, that money you save is not worth the honor that you compromise.
First Date Payment Rules00:11:00
It is such a big deal.
It's a massive deal.
I love everything you said.
Please explain what was happening there and who that was.
Well, so first of all, those are two great guys.
I don't remember their names.
Unfortunately, it's from the Iced Coffee Hour podcast.
So at least I got their show right.
They were really sweet.
They came to Phoenix.
They brought their mobile studio.
They're up and coming in the podcast world, which I have a soft spot for, as I'm sure you do, Megan.
They were really great, right?
And so they asked this question and he was just so terribly wrong on this.
And what was so interesting, I have multiple takes on this.
The first of which is that the comments I got, the video went super viral, right?
It got tens of millions of views.
The comments from the women were so overwhelming.
Yes, thank you.
We need more of this.
Why don't men do this anymore?
Then from the men, it's like, Charlie is wrong.
Like women aren't worth it.
Now, let me just say, hold on.
Let me just take a whole recalibration.
Now, there were some men that agreed, but overwhelmingly, the women were the ones that were driving this video, which is unique because that's not always the case for Charlie Kirk videos.
Usually it's the opposite, but it's good.
Listen, a man needs to demonstrate leadership and the capacity to provide early on.
That doesn't mean that you end up have to have that role when you're having a marriage, but from the outset, what it means to be a man is to take directive, to be leadership, to be, to have the protector of the family.
And not to mention the young lady that is there, deep down, she wants to show that when all the crap hits the fan, the man can take care of her and that he will do the alpha move and that he's not going to split the check.
And there's also a, I didn't mention this in the video, so I'll say this here, Megan.
It filters out ingratitude.
It filters out the character of the person you are courting.
I was shocked.
I learned this, that so many men came to me and said, Charlie, when I pay for a lot of the first dates, the women never say thank you.
I said, ah, yet another good reason to pay on the first date because you learn as much about her as she is learning about you.
And I asked a group of women, 100 women, I said, appealing or unappealing, attractive or unattractive, the man on the first date pays the check without you even knowing and goes to the mate or D-enhance the credit card while he goes to the bathroom.
They said, it's beyond a turnup.
I said, so for men, I mean, for men, you're talking about a way that you could advantage yourself.
Now, as they say, well, what if the date didn't go well?
Still does not matter.
What if you think that it will never go anywhere?
Still does not matter.
You have to, you have a role to play.
And on a date, the woman is there to be courted by you.
That is the way this works, right?
You are the one that is hosting.
You are the one that is hospitable.
And I think a breakdown of that has been so destructive.
But to complete the point, so many of the men that pay for it, they find out a lot about the women.
So I could go endlessly about this, Megan, but I think I learned about that this was happening, by the way, in this podcast.
Afterwards, I said, are you telling me that men aren't paying for everything on the first date?
They said, oh, yeah, all the time that we're splitting it.
I say, no wonder why male-female relations have fallen down so much.
We need men to be men again.
We need to raise our sons to be men of honor, of character, and leadership to look after the women in their lives, to say that women are not just beautiful, but they're honorable and they're sacred and that we provide for our wives and that we honor our mothers and that we protect our sisters.
That's the men that we want to raise in our country.
And we've gotten away from that.
Oh, I love it.
Right on.
I agree with every word.
Shoot it into my veins, as they say.
A shout out to the podcast.
It is hosted by Graham Stefan and Jack Selby.
They explore very good conversations.
We're so wrong on that, but they were sweet young.
Totally.
And I'll tell you, I can relate to that even as a working woman who obviously can support herself.
But when Doug and I met, and I was still working, I was at Fox News.
I was in my infancy at Fox News.
He was making a lot more money than I was, and he was running his own company.
And I mean, if he had actually suggested that we split the bill or that I pay, he would have been out the window in a New York second.
I mean, it was wouldn't have even been a consideration.
It was clear that he was taking care of me in that way.
We both understood it.
And then eventually in the course of our relationship, just because media is what it is, I wound up earning more than Doug just because, you know, that's, you know, how it is.
But still, he takes care of me.
Still, he's in the alpha role in our personal life.
And I'm more in the beta role in our personal life, which I love.
That turns me on.
Like if it were something else, I don't think it would work.
And I don't think people understand that.
That's true, I think, universally for 99% of women, whether they're working women or not working women or women who work in the home, et cetera, they do want to be taken care of.
It's biological and they want to take care of their men in different ways too.
Yes.
And also, this is very important that the man, if he is not providing or if he is not productive, then something happens to men that's really hard for us to sometimes put to words, but the statistics show it.
They kind of get emasculated.
They get into pornography.
They gain a bunch of weight where it is best for a man to have pressure.
Men succeed under pressure.
And so many young men are without pressure.
And sometimes you go on a first date.
You know what?
You have to have the pressure to provide on that first date.
So many young men are in a pressure-free environment.
What does that mean?
They don't have to provide for themselves.
They don't have to provide for others.
They don't have to show.
So when all of a sudden pressure makes the man, where you have to show up at 5 a.m. for work, that you have to make enough money to pay for rent.
And then, yes, you also have to provide for a family.
And I could say this as a married man with two kids.
Something happens the way God wired us once you get married with kids, where you just figure it out.
And you're like, I'll take a second job.
I'll work all night.
I'm going to ask the boss for a raise.
I'm going to come up with a new idea because all of a sudden you feel this biological need that I have to feed these kids.
And it sometimes happens subconsciously, but it's so important.
And the same thing happens, by the way, for moms, right?
They are like, we got to get the house organized, right?
We have to make sure it's clean.
We got to make sure the meals.
It's the same sort of thing.
And they always can't put words to it.
But for the man, it gives them purpose in their work.
It gives them satisfaction.
Like, okay, it was a rough day at work, but I came home and these kids are fed and they could go to school and we live in a nice neighborhood.
And it gives man a sense of contentment and satisfaction that is so missing from modernity with these young men, largely because we've taken them out of this kind of purpose-filled life.
And I think, again, I would say, and it's so interesting you said what you said, Megan, that the women that are the prizes, if you split the check with them, there probably will not be a second date.
Oh, hell no.
Hell no.
And can I say the other thing that you're talking about that I think people need to be reminded of, and I think is important, is the man should be the pursuer in the early relationship.
And frankly, I mean, Doug and I have been married, I don't know how many years now, 18 years, and he's still pursuing me.
He's still not sure where it's going to land.
It has to be.
It's biologically conditioned.
Yes.
Men and women are to for the man to be the pursuer.
He's the lion and you're the gazelle.
And he's like programmed to run after you.
And if you upend that in any way, you're messing with nature.
You know, so that like men, young men should know you do need to make the phone calls.
Even if she didn't call you back, you have to be the one to text first.
It's like almost like a reporter going after his source.
In a way, you're subjugated, but you're not actually subjugated.
You're doing it because you're the leader in the relationship in this way.
And there's nothing wrong with that.
It's actually hot and appropriate and part of the game and the turn on.
Yes.
And if you're a young woman, I have to say this, and you think that it's pervy or weird if a man is pursuing you, you got deep problems.
I hear this a lot from men.
And so young ladies out there are like, oh, well, I think it's weird if he approaches me at a bar.
Get over yourself.
Like that's nature.
That's biological, right?
Have enough self-confidence, be like, I'm not interested.
Thank you so much, right?
Correct.
Don't go out alone if you feel unsafe.
And you talk about this all the time, right, Megan?
But what has happened is this hostility.
And I think men are overcompensating, but men have just retreated.
They're like, forget it.
We're done.
You don't want to talk to us.
You're going to accuse us of sexual harassment.
I don't think that's the right reaction.
But young ladies in some ways have unintentionally created this kind of like, oh, I can't believe that guy at work came up to me and he wanted to talk to me.
They will wind up alone.
They will wind up rigid.
And they wonder why they're alone.
Exactly.
And for the women, I think they need to remember, yes, it's his job to sort of be the alpha and pursue you, but you should stay playful.
You can be somewhat elusive, you know, because men like that.
Hello, but also playful.
Like you have to be signaling back, I'm into you, if not always available to you.
Well, that is how it works.
Yes.
Men want what they cannot have, and they will keep on pursuing what they cannot have if they think there's a chance.
And there's that beautiful thing where it's like, so you're telling me there's a shot.
You're telling me there's a chance.
Right.
And so again, that for the women out there, you know, exercise class and piety properly understood.
But, you know, again, you could be playful.
You could be artful with it.
Don't, you don't have to be overly flirty, but you definitely can be classy in the way that you engage with it.
Right.
Because a man will also, women will find this, a man will improve himself, his income, and his character to elevate towards a woman.
And so you will find that men will do things that they will not do for anybody else in the pursuit of a woman.
They'll stop drinking.
They'll stop watching porn.
They'll get a second job.
They will not eat for a week.
They'll go to the gym.
Like it does things to the male mind and women don't always understand that.
So I say women, hold yourself to such a high standard that the man wants to pursue you, that they have to elevate themselves towards that.
That's right.
That's exactly.
I couldn't agree with this more.
I think you and I need to start like a conservative dating service, Charlie, because you and I both know there are so many young conservatives out there who want to be connected with people but are having a difficult time and maybe don't even know how to behave or what the so-called rules are anymore, but I think we could help them.